American Virgins
You’ll never meet three sisters with less in common.
– National Geographic, 1956.
Discovery always happens on the second
trip, 11,000 virgins,
a thought, I guess, to which he masturbated.
Eventually a war takes them away
from him, from me,
all of me, my friend, for 300 an acre.
A harried caretaker laughs,
Cannons and cockroaches stand erect.
Sleek cars, jewelry trade and whore bars;
A century like the plant, death follows every blossom.
Lolling boats appear suspended in these clear waters
where blocks away
fans cheer a West Indian cock infused with rum.
Small misunderstandings come big
by Island English, Calypso Talk
Irish, Old Danish and African cusswords.
In 1954, 17,000 glimpse a spree.
Mr. Espirit drove a taxi and Ms. Espirit cleaned the house
of winter-weary silver profusions,
preserved annual invasions.
“We should never be placed in a less favorable condition than now”
Pirate historians authenticate a few fire-gutted crowns.
The Yankee dollar, oh the Yankee dollar!
“Saint Trauma, Saint Cry, Saint Yawn”
Mysterious documents turn to sport in these clear waters.
Cannabis cannonballs splash by the pool.
Utter disorder seems to enjoy himself.
Love Junk,
Harry bought a profit rent free.
Oars and spears, boats and bleached heads,
fire engine red.
Economies floated by cruise ships cascade
in frothy waves.
Half its people live sharply
and half are shapely.
Ex-barefoot oily relations stripped to the waist,
free us from duty.
As a moon-lit night casts her net
on rich impoverished shores,
I fear all but this might not sustain us.
Look at my hands, I’ve done all the digging,
reconstructing fragments of a famed filmmaker.
What turned the Ciboney into shadowy people?
Tawny haired archaeology stays on to lose her heart.
Translucent savages now swarm, recovering images
shattered from her province.
“Saint Trauma, Saint Cry, Saint Yawn”
She bore across me as I dropped in
on another drowsy colonial capital.
The ghosts of the day linger over streets,
as if still proud of Guinea.
The influence of painted sign boards pop-up
and unexpected places turn predictable.
A church street flaunts ciphers of a monarch
proclaiming his pious doubts over this ornate town.
A hardware counting house shelves imported foods
with sausage clerked by a boy.
Expect all kinds of surprises
as we wait for the island to catch up.
Gracious old buildings encapsulated in gold-trimmed showcases,
Sound systems howl where fretful infants cry
under shady mahogany.
Their glass-fronted cribs roll down its lanes
“Man you should see it on Saturdays.”
Man O’ Wars wheel and dive,
remind me of everyone who’s jumped overboard
ever since Burn Burn.
“Saint Trauma, Saint Cry, Saint Yawn”
A cool warren that guards this sleepy port proclaims
all un-free now free.
“I’ve never seen emancipation,
but I’ve seen a man’s penis.”
As if some colonist pressed
pause on the whole psychology,
This is the year of tonnage.
In sight of Golden Grove
Something grinds like an old machine with new technique
And whispers conveyor belt proverbs,
to the steam-driven management.
Import season again. 32,000 at a time
75 percent of the story is told.
One asked as if with a snore, when will I be served?
Drive a half dozen Crucians to the army.
Now see what’s really going on.
A real estate man and his retired annuity
budget paradise, it now costs a 100 bucks to leave your home.
“I suspect this will become a place for the well to do”
The summer weighted week gestures to a local family,
“maybe not for you.”
The business man from Philadelphia and a retired dancer,
leased to him for a year round summer,
offers up a restored plantation to a handful of paying guests.
“You can see why they call them mosquito orchids”
A constitutional allowance, our organic crack,
“Penny for Penny,” so many things became impossible.
This arrangement woos bathers, builders, boatmen
to strip our glistening crowded empty standards.
Did the navy save our skins –
Red Man, High Tone, Whitey Peyhey?
Last summer’s cry was typical; most important it concluded.
“Saint Trauma, Saint Cry, Saint Yawn”
Eventually philanthropy will free us from civilization;
It takes the two-thirds that kept her that way.
From there I sight Uncle’s 29th park, a place to park he ass.
When you get there give my regards
to the house that administers spanks on the old four poster.
Slightly bruised, sorted mail now shares her with the world.
Most everyone here liked the idea,
of a somnolent capital which cannot being defaced.
And flashing a wide grin my guide towards the other side,
exclaims that no man in this tangled forest center
has ever found himself.
A flowered taxi negotiates hair-raising roads that
now bring white power to cross-threaded trails as though
they never glimpsed hardship
and are no longer places where people have to face themselves.
I discovered a hole in my stay where city folk turn remote
but there is a shadiness here deep in our ghuts,
and it can roll over like boiling lobsters.
A blond visitor elects me
arcing like a rainbow over Europa bay
And I carefully give her back to the sea unhurt.
The spear-shaped leaves of the Kapok and the wild tobacco —
we pant for water scaling the precipitous track
mashing bayrum with our feet.
Just then dozers were removing the Death apple, foe of the settler;
its caustic sap pulsed from the broken bark as though from a heart.
Wealth had developed holes dimly visible beneath my roots.
From the first time we met,
Its interest was always this distant real estate.
—-
Jon Euwema is a St. Thomian designer, visual artist and poet. He was one of several V.I. artists included in a presentation given on Virgin Islands contemporary artists at Casa de las Americas in Havana, Cuba in 2015. His latest project is a series of limited-edition prints dealing with V.I. vernacular dialect.